The pressures of combat, frigid weather, and a rapidly shifting front line complicated disposition of the dead on both sides. The difficulties encountered by both combatants explain the regular discovery of remains up to this day, particularly in the heavily forested Hurtgen Forest region. Though leaving fallen comrades behind was undoubtedly wrenching for both German and American soldiers of a primarily Christian background, official and unofficial methods of grave registration differed considerably.

The Germans usually buried their comrades where they fell, sometimes in a nearby village. The grave was marked with the soldier's helmet, and a wooden cross stating the name and date of death. During the heavy fighting in the Bulge, Mathilde Schmetz reported that both American and German graves in the Northern Shoulder were sometimes marked only with two sticks crudely fastened into a cross. Some of these grave designations were already gone by the spring of 1945, blown down or collapsed under the snow. Though the ID tag of a German soldier was buried with the body, only a helmet remained to mark the burial place. Some of these bodies were eventually retrieved by the families and reburied closer to home, but many graves have been lost forever with time.

Marcel Schmetz recalls the accidental death of a German soldier who was "playing around with a grenade" in Sept 1944. The young German was buried on the neighbor's farm where he had been billeted, and Marcel vividly remembers passing the cross and helmet every day on the way to school. Over the course of several months, the cross collapsed but the helmet remained for "a long time" until it, too, disappeared. He is unsure if the body was ever exhumed.

The museum in Diekirch contains several German death notices sent to families, along with photos and letters home. Vague descriptions of the gravesites, e.g. "two kilometers south of Bech by the large tree", would make locating a burial site very difficult. Both Marcel and Mathilde Schmetz say the helmets were left undisturbed out of respect for the deceased, regardless of whether they were German or American. Both suspect artifact hunters over the last decade have found the helmets and unknowingly removed the only remaining marker for many graves. Even more disturbing, the Schmetzs report that graves in their area have been intentionally disrupted in search of valuable military collectables.

Luxembourger Emil Hansen says his family found many temporary German graves in foxholes when they returned to their Weilerbach farm in March 1945. Fred Karen, thirteen at the time, helped his mother bury a decomposing German body behind their garden wall the same month: "The weather was warming up and he smelled too bad. There wasn't anything else to do"

Even today, untouched remains are occasionally found. Fred Karen discovered a German body in 1997 on Hill 313 outside Echternach. The intact body lay under about a foot of leaves, below a steep bluff far from the hiking trails which crisscross the former battlefield. The distinctive hobnailed boots triggered Fred's metal detector; shallow digging unearthed a boot and human remains. The still-intact ID tags made possible contact of surviving family members and military reburial by the German consulate.

A presumed human bone and German boot was found by a US military family on Hill 313 in 2010. No other artifacts were found nearby and Luxembourg authorities did not think there was enough evidence to conduct a further search. The bone was respectfully reburied by the family in the original location.

Another German skeleton was located in July 2002 behind the Fromburg farm outside Osweiler Luxembourg. A search was prompted by a veteran from the 12th Volksgrenadiers who remembered burying a friend in that site. The remains were found 30 cm deep, and included a bayonet, spade, bullets, and straps. The soldier was found with American phone cable wrapped around his ankles, probably placed to drag him through the snowy forest to the burial site. Unfortunately no identification was found, so notification of survivors was not possible. The skeletal remains were claimed by the German consulate and buried in an "Unbekannt" or "Unknown" grave in a German military cemetery. This soldier's effects are tastefully displayed in diorama of a gravesite in the Diekirch Military Museum.

Contrary to US Army practice, the Germans sometimes buried both American and German casualties together in the same location. A Time/Life photo shows neatly lettered identical wooden crosses with an American "John D. Ford" and a German "Otto Krelmes" in adjacent graves. American policy at this time forbid burial of any American soldier on German soil and led to formation of American cemeteries in adjacent countries.

George Daubenfeld describes finding two "completely carbonized" German bodies still at the controls of a tank in the summer of 1945. At this time, wartime vehicles and exploded bunkers remained in the Luxembourg fields where they'd been abandoned the previous winter. A neighbor had found a nest of kittens in the tank, and suggested 9 year old George take a look. He remembers looking down into the tank and seeing the kittens, while casually noting the bodies: "The Germans were like animals to us, they meant nothing."

The German/Luxembourg War Graves Treaty in 1952 allowed the recovery and repatriation of 5300 German war dead in Luxembourg. A visit to one of the German war cemeteries scattered throughout the Ardennes region is a bit unsettling. Simple black stone crosses mark the names of the four soldiers in separate adjoining graves. As in the American cemeteries, graves of unknown soldiers are numerous, with "Ein Unbekannter Deutscher Soldat" replacing "Here Rests in Honored Glory a Comrade in Arms Known But to God". For many years, families in the DDR were not able to visit their soldiers in Soldatenfriedhofs in the west. Likewise, millions of German soldiers killed on the Eastern Front in Russia were buried in unknown graves, though recovery efforts have begun with the opening of the Eastern Bloc. Grave robbing in Russia has become such a problem that the German government tracks sellers of WWII German dog tags on ebay.